General WAC update

Over at the Convocation Center, checking out some pickup games between the men’s basketball team. (An early tip — 6-8 Australian freshmen Jeromie Hill and Iggy Nujic are going to be really good.) Found a great resource tool at UTSA Today that lists revenues and expenses for all NCAA schools.

A quick rundown on the six WAC members for the 2008-09 school year:

Hawaii — $33.3 million in revenues, $35.7 million in expenses

New Mexico St. — $26.9 million in revenues, $28.8 million in expenses

San Jose St. — $18.7 million in revenues, $17.8 million in expenses

Utah St. — $17 million in revenues, $17.8 million in expenses

Louisiana Tech — $16 million in revenues, $16 million in expenses

Idaho — $15.1 million in revenus, $15.6 million in expenses

So, UTSA might not actually be in too bad shape with a $21 million budget, which would put them in the upper half of the WAC as currently composed. Granted, inflation will be a factor. At the same time, it’s pretty decent to assume that UTSA was conservative with its projections. So, as big an issue as travel will be, it might actually be relatively tolerable.

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A few good reads in advance of the national athletic director’s meeting in Dallas, where as many as 10 schools — including UTSA and Texas State — will make formal pitches to join the Western Athletic Conference on Sept. 28.

And a more newsy item here on the slate of participants for Tuesday’s meeting.

Looking at the names, Texas State, UTSA, Denver and Seattle all make a certain amount of sense despite various warts.

The first two would give the WAC a football anchor in the state of Texas, which Benson identified as imperative right after news broke that his conference was on life support. Denver and Seattle (alma mater of NBA legend Elgin Baylor), neither of which play football, would help the WAC to remain above the thresholds required for basketball.

Beyond that, it’s a real hodgepodge that illustrates the situation the WAC is in.

Assuming the aforementioned schools get invitations — and considering the dearth of candidates, it would be nothing less than a shock if UTSA and Texas St. don’t — you’ve got the following lineup:

Hawaii Louisiana TechUtah St. San Jose St. New Mexico St. Idaho UTSATexas St.DenverSeattle

What a motley cast of characters. (Maybe a name change would be appropriate? How does “The Leftover Athletic Conference” sound?)

If UTSA had options, it would probably be best to just skip it, grow the program and wait for something better. Just look at the travel woes the Roadrunners will have to contend with:

Est. 3,500 miles to HawaiiEst. 1,800 miles to SeattleEst. 1,500 miles to Moscow, Idaho (Think that’s a fun trip in the middle of January?)Est. 1,450 miles to San JoseEst. 1,100 miles to Logan, UtahEst. 800 miles to Denver

It goes without saying that moving from a bus league like the Southland to the most far-flung conference in the country is going to present huge challenges.

Perhaps not for football, in which there will only be a few of these monster trips a year. But the rest of the athletic department? The basketball, baseball, softball, soccer and volleyball teams? That’s going to be a major drain of time and money that not even a split-division format, which commissioner Karl Benson said he is considering, will entirely relieve.

One former athletic director in the WAC told me it was a primary reason his school left. A current WAC athletic director told me it’s one of the league’s biggest problems.

You just have to wonder where the money is going to come from. According to a recent proforma, UTSA’s budget is projected to be up around $21 million by 2015-16. But that’s all it is — a projection. For all the guaranteed money the school can expect from its student athletic fee (up to nearly $14 million by ’15-16), UTSA is still going to have to sell X number of tickets and woo Y amount of donations to make up the difference.

Even if it does, will UTSA be able to withstand the strain for a couple of years until it gets there — provided, again, it sells enough tickets and receives enough donations.

Look at the 2008-09 travel budget for Boise State, which will soon leave the WAC for the more geographically-sane Mountain West: $1.9 million, a 16% increase from the previous year. Some of that was caused by the addition of softball, Boise State AD Gene Bleymaier told the Idaho Statesman. But the biggest cause was simple inflation, which Blaymaier put at 10-15 percent per year.

Now consider UTSA’s projection of about $2.4 projection for travel in 2015-16. That doesn’t seem nearly enough to cover the kind of expenditures it would likely take to handle life in the WAC. Accounting for inflation, and the fact that UTSA is even more far-flung than Boise, and you might — I stress might; I didn’t get into sports writing because of my skill with math beyond rushing totals and scoring averages — be looking at something closer to $3.5 – 4 million.

So should UTSA end up receiving and accepting an invitation, you can bet it will do so with a healthy amount of trepidation.